LL1885

In case you missed it, the ACLU, Equality NC, Lambda Legal and several citizen plaintiffs are suing the state over HB2.

I broke down some of the points made in the plaintiff’s case and pointed out the plaintiffs themselves were admitting transgenderism is really a classified mental disorder (gender dysphoria) and their case doesn’t even address the requirements of biological sex in HB2.

In other words, their case is built on feelings, comfort and desire of the transgender person, not biology.

Meet Hunter Shaffer, one of the plaintiffs of the HB2 lawsuit. According to Lamdba Legal, “Hunter was diagnosed with gender dysphoria in the ninth grade.”  

According to the News and Observer’s article in September 2015, Shaffer is seeking treatment at a new Duke center dealing with transgender adolescents.

Shaffer is a boy who takes hormones,  dresses like a girl, has long hair and is apparently living in the girls dorm at  the UNC School of the Arts high school (UNCSA). Do his dorm mates know? Well, they probably do now.

In an interview with FOX 8, Shaffer himself says he suffers from gender dysphoria.

Now, we’ve solidly established that Shaffer is a biological male, who suffers from a mental disorder known as gender dysphoria and is currently undergoing treatment in the form of hormone blocking, a treatment which the American Pediatric Association deems dangerous.

All of this so far is fact.  Now let’s look at  feeling.

Shaffer laments in a WUNC interview:

“I don’t know how comfortable I am using the men’s restroom looking and feeling the way I do, like that’s not where I belong.”

Again, we see this is about the individual comfort. This is about the individual feelings.
It is not about fact, safety, biology, decency or the law. It’s about redefinition of law to suit the emotional wants of less than .3% of the U.S. population.

The WUNC article continues:

Schafer is now a junior at the UNC School of the Arts high school. She identifies as a transgender woman, but was designated male at birth. Schafer looks stereotypically feminine. She wears her blond hair long and her eyelashes are coated with light mascara. Hormone therapy prevents her from growing facial hair, which Schafer says she can’t imagine having.

“Facial hair just terrified me,” Schafer explained, visibly cringing at the thought. “That was something that just did not resonate with me at all. You know, I can’t really explain why. It just was.”

Schafer uses the women’s restroom at school. But that means that since the passage of HB2, Schafer is breaking the law each time she goes to the bathroom.

The boy is “terrified” of facial hair.
He can’t really explain why and  admits to openly breaking the law.
Yet, Shaffer seems to be the Poster boy for this lawsuit.

Yes,  I said boy.  Shaffer isn’t a post-operative case, he is a boy no matter how lovely his long hair is and no matter how “stereotypically” feminine he looks.

This person is a boy who has feelings they are a girl. I don’t doubt their sincerity but as even Shaffer admits, he is suffering from a DSM classified mental disorder.  A disorder that the rest of us are being forced to accommodate or you’re a hateful bigot who just doesn’t understand gender dysphoria.

No, I understand Gender Identity Disorder (GID) just fine. That’s what it used to be called before it was redefined as gender dysphoria.  My educational background is clinical and adolescent psychology and I had internship experience that included a GID patient.  I get it.

Now, before anyone out there actually starts screaming ‘ hateful bigot!‘ at me for, you know, using facts — here’s where I agree with Shaffer:

The law allows Schaffer to use a gender-neutral restroom. But she says there aren’t enough of them.

There should be more gender neutral bathrooms. By more gender neutral, I mean more unisex or ‘family’ accommodations in addition to single sex facilities.

I’ve said this from day one. Had the Charlotte ordinance not banned single sex facilities city-wide but instead offered this kind of common sense accommodation more widely throughout the city, I doubt we’d be having this conversation today.

But Charlotte didn’t do that and that was likely intentional due to the way the ordinance was written. It seemed pretty clear to me the intent of the ordinance wasn’t aiding transgender people with facilities access, it was an all or nothing scenario. In other words,  forced integration.

The same scenario is playing out with the U.S. Department of Education and their selective  interpretation of Title IX. Their suits in Illinois and Virginia show that the plaintiff has no desire for separate accommodations. No, they want to use the opposite sex’s accommodations.

Moreover, these plaintiffs think they have a right to use them based on what they believe in their head.  The 4th Circuit court of appeals basically said that argument holds water and send the case back down to a lower court to be heard. The court ruled on feelings, not facts.

Should we feel empathy? Without reservation, yes.

Should an estimated 470 people in our state get to bully the other 10 million simply based on their individual need for comfort? Without reservation, no.

4.7 per 100,000?
That’s 470 out of 10 million people.
.0046% of NC’s population are dictating where we pee. pic.twitter.com/6sLlnbPeMS

— A.P. Dillon – LL1885 (@LadyLiberty1885) April 23, 2016

Authors Note:
Some people might be grumbling that I’m picking on a ‘child’ by writing this.
However, I demonstrated throughout this piece that Shaffer is involved in a very public lawsuit and has been making the rounds in the media quite happily promoting the HB2 case. As such, he  is therefore made himself a public figure.